Audio-visual Artefact for 24 miles to home: a rehabilitation of time and space.

a short video exploring some of the context, and themes of my work. Engaging with other artists practices, and introducing my work in a clear, concise and pragmatic way.

AV Artefact transcript:
Slide (1)
{title page}24 miles to home: a rehabilitation of time and space. Benjamin Hague
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{video from work (erewash canal swan)} Have you ever felt like your time is being eroded away? Sometimes it seems that within every aspect of our lives, we have less and less time for the things that we enjoy, or the things that we need to do. There can be a number of reasons for this: Familial commitments, working from home, the length of our workday, our commute into and out of the office, to the implied expectation of total availability in both our personal and profession lives. many workers face constant encroachments into their personal time on a day to day basis. With such constant interruptions in our busy professional and social lives, there is little time left available for rest and recouperation.
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Dr Devon Price explores this idea in their book, Laziness Does Not Exist: {“There is a set of unspoken yet deeply held cultural beliefs that each of us absorbs throughout our lifetime about the value of work and the danger of laziness. The ‘laziness lie’ has three main tenets: Your worth is your productivity. There is always more you could be doing. You cannot trust your own needs and limitations.” Devon Price Ph.D.}
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This video work represents a rejection of, and a rebellion against these ideals. Instead, the work focuses upon the locus of time as a bringer of rest, and a driving force of healing. The slow, somnolent pace lulls your eyes into a feeling of rest, as you watch the world float by. This, however, can only represent a short rest from the pressures of the modern day. Slow and economically unproductive travel is the antithesis of the drive of modern-day commerce: In many ways this can be seen as the natural progression of the capitalist system under which we all must live, in a scathing critique of the future of the capitalist system, Philosopher Karl Marx famously writes about the
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{‘‘‘annihilation of space by time’. The tension between the imperatives of space and time gives rise to the development of faster and faster transportation technologies that hasten the pace at which commodities move across space, thereby overcoming the distance of markets. Spatial distances become measured by the time it takes to move between two points, and this time is increasingly compressed.”}
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{Swarkestone canal crane} it could then be seen as ironic that this work has been created in the economic heartlands from which, began the industrial Revolution. The East Midlands, from the Mills of Derbyshire, to the Pits of Nottinghamshire and the surrounding areas, were at one point the driving force behind the United Kingdom’s Economical prowess. Indeed most all of these goods manufactured throughout The Midlands, would have at one point had to make the same journey that this work explores. What were once thriving, bustling routes of trade, have now either fallen into disuse and disrepair, or are being utilised as domestic or recreational spaces: firmly within the realm of the leisure industry.
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{video of work } the viewpoint of the work is created as though the viewer is experiencing this journey, not just as a passenger along for the ride, but rather as if they were the watercraft themselves. The footage simulates the reality of the experience of the Boat, and as such the recreation is an example of Simulacra: a simulation of a simulation. The connection between art as a simulation of simulated experience goes back to ancient Greece, where one of two beliefs which Plato is credited with states that:
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“since art imitates physical things, which in turn imitate the Forms, art is always a copy of a copy, and leads us even further from truth and toward illusion.” David Clowney, Rowan University
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The work is also heavily influenced thematically by Alan Sekula’s Fish story:
{Fish Story thus confronted the space-time compression of a consumerist world whose latest buzzword, ‘friction-free capitalism’, conjured images of a dematerialised economy newly enabled by the computer as ‘the sole engine of our progress’ BILL ROBERTS The Thawing of Postmodernism TATE }
In a similar way to the way in which Marx predicted the downfall of capitalism, it has been predicted the advancement of computers will present significant issues for The Proletariat. As Artificial Intelligence matures it becomes more and more capable, and increasingly accessible. Take for example the Tanka and Haiku Poetry within the video work. All were collaboratively created utilising Chat GPT, and Google Bard’s AI services, with varying levels of prompting, and instances of revisions required throughout.
Slide 10
The waterways provide a unique locale for rest, and recouperation. Surrounded by nature, and with an overwhelming peace and soothing tranquillity perfectly surmised in Hermann Hesse’s novel Siddhartha:
{“did you too learn that secret from the river: that there is no time?” Vasudeva’s face was filled with a bright smile. “Yes, Siddhartha,” he spoke. “It is this what you mean, isn’t it: that the river is everywhere at once, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains, everywhere at once, and that there is only the present time for it, not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future?”}
Perhaps it is this then, That the universality of the lived experience is what draws people to the waterways. Water is always in the present, whilst in its ebbs and its flows, it surges and recedes, this signifies the passing of time, and the importance of living in the moment: Time is after all the most precious thing with which we are gifted.